Techcrunch vs Twitter

What would you do if you owned a newspaper, magazine, or Web site and you walked in one morning and you found a large package on your desk. There was a note with the package, that stated the documents were stolen and contained the future business information for a well known Internet company along with some personal information. Would you release all the information, some of the information or none of it. That is the situation that Techcrunch found themselves in this morning. Ok the package was actually a zip file and was sent by email, but you get the picture. Techcrunch decided to publish some of the business information and none of the of the personal information, which Michael Arrington stated in his post "The vast majority of them are somewhat embarrassing to various individuals, but not otherwise interesting". This of course leads to the question if the personal information had been interesting would they still not posted it. This is a question only those involved can answer. There are those that are mad at Techcrunch, because they are only releasing part of the business information. They accuse Techcrunch of being influence by the Twitter SUL (suggested user list) issue. Whether this is an issue or not we can only speculate.

There are two questions that must be answered, first is does Tech Crunch have the right to release the documents and the second is should they. I say they do have the right to release the documents. The idea that they shouldn't release the documents because they were stolen doesn't hold water. Many documents that newspapers, magazines receive are first gotten by illegal means. I doubt that the person forwarding the documents to Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate-had the right to those document. I am certain he didn't have the right to release the information to them. Did that mean that the Washington Post should not have released the Watergate information. I don't think so. I think for many people the problem is not that the information is being release, but who is releasing it. Michael Arrington is not the most popular man on the Internet today. He is obnoxious and disliked don't you know ( to misquote a scene from the movie 1776). I wonder if the reaction would have been the same if the information had been released by some other Website . Whether they should release the information is another question I don't have an answer to for. I would have to see the information to make that decision. However, I will not condemn Techcrunch for making the decision they did.

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